Post by Lorpius Prime on Sept 7, 2009 21:05:53 GMT -5
Republican Battlecruiser Exkirid
Ker Hagg star system, 2030.
On an older ship, the transition would have been imperceptible. The Exkirid was not an older ship. The battlecruiser was less than a year old and was equipped with the very latest model warp drive designed by the Republic's scientists. The drive was 20% smaller than the previous military standard, but almost 15% more powerful, and with enough fine control to create a much tighter warp bubble. That drive was the reason Exkirid had been chosen to make the run to Ker Hagg. For most of the fleet, the journey would have taken a month or more. The Exkirid had arrived in just under three weeks.
Because the warp drive was so new and so powerful, however, the Republic's engineers had not yet finished fine-tuning the internal gravity generators which were supposed to compensate for the shock of transition back to normal space. The result was that the entire battlecruiser shuddered violently as soon as the warp bubble was released and the Exkirid once again became a tangible part of the universe.
Ordinary Operative Hyong Yaheek of the Republican Intelligence Service had braced himself for the transition by grasping a handlebar by his chair. But while this did prevent him from falling completely out of his seat, it also caused him to jam one of his finger claws against the handlebar's mounting. Hyong hissed with pain and clutched the injured finger tightly in his other hand.
Fortunately for Hyong, however, his was not the worst injury. Junior Weapons Controller Shregrikyeden had allowed his head to whip forward and crash into his console—which, fortunately, was in safe mode. Hyong harbored no particular dislike for Shregrikyeden; he was a reasonably competent soldier, if not especially bright. Right now, however, Hyong was glad the Weapons Controller was the one earning the glares of the various Command Officers in the Exkirid's CIC.
"Transition complete," one of the navigation observers announced dryly. Shregrikyeden received a few more sneers as he rubbed his forehead before everyone in the CIC had turned his attention to his own instruments.
For Hyong, this did not require much in the way of concentration. He was currently backing up the Communications station on the bridge. This was a more interesting responsibility than backing up, say, weapons, but not by very much. And it certainly wasn't very interesting when there weren't any comm signals to monitor. Hyong spent a minute or two confirming that the Exkirid was not, in fact, detecting any intelligible signals of any kind. Then he shrunk the Communications display into a tiny corner of the monitor and called up the sensor feeds to see if they showed anything more interesting.
They did.
"Well, the moon's got an active shield running, at least," the head of the sensor section observed.
"There's nothing coming out of it, though," whined Hyong's own superior, Junior Command Operative Kerexyajuzaw, from her seat above and behind him.
"I don't see any large orbitals, either," one of the junior sensor observers piped up. "Obviously the shields are there, but if they've got any weapons or warehouses or anything, we're not picking them up. And we ought to at this range."
"They've been here." The Junior Commander in charge of the weapons station was showing a deeper scowl now than he had given Shregrikyeden.
"Assumptions, Yewyingriker," rumbled the CIC's commander, from his position at the back of the center.
Hyong agreed with Junior Commander Yewyingriker. But even so, the CIC's commander was right. It was not merely prudent for the soldiers here to avoid making assumptions, it was their duty. The CIC was a source of information and analysis for the officers on the Bridge. It was then those officers' duty to make judgment calls based on that information. The CIC had to maintain strict objectivity, or else risk compromising the decisions of the command crew. Hyong felt confident in his ability to avoid creeping bias into his own reports—even if a large part of the reason why was that he had nothing to report.
The comm monitor was pulsing now, but it was merely displaying outgoing communications. The Exkirid was searching for any responsive individual or automaton in the Ker Hagg system, so far without a response. Although this did not necessarily mean anything yet, since the system's only inhabited moon was several light-hours away.
Still, it was Hyong's job to keep an eye on the communications. He maximized the display again to review all the outgoing messages and make sure there weren't any obvious errors which might affect the results. Everything appeared to be in order, however, and eventually Hyong switched back to gazing at the sensors.
The lack of signals was worrisome, but it was not unexpected.
Four weeks ago a freighter had warped into the Republic's capital system. The freighter had fled the Kawyay system a week ago, after a Charterling battlefleet had dropped into the system. Kawyay was a core system of the Republic, and as such had a larger defense fleet than many others. But after a day without further news, the Republic had detached a heavy task force from the Home Fleet and sent it off to Kawyay. The hope was that the system's fleet was merely too weakened to risk detaching any of its combat power to report home. Still, the Republican Navy made sure its reinforcements were strong enough to win back the system if that proved necessary.
Less than a day after the taskforce had departed, however, another vessel arrived, this one a military courier from Yiye, another core system. The courier brought news of a second Charterling battlefleet which had appeared and begun skirmishing with Yiye's defense fleet.
The Navy was still debating the dispatch of reinforcements to counter this second attack when another FTL ship arrived to report an assault on a third system in the Republican core, Nyandek.
That made up the Navy's mind. If there was a large scale Charterling attack underway against the very heart of the Republic, then Home Fleet could not afford to detach any more of its heavy units which might be needed to defend Karee. The Fleet was put on high alert, and a handful of fast, expendable ships were tasked with probing the other core systems to discover if any more had been attacked but were unable to send a message.
Ker Hagg was one of the more distant core systems, which was why the Navy had sent a ship with the new drive system. But it also did not have a very hefty defense fleet on station, which was why the Navy had sent the Exkirid. The battlecruiser could not stand off a fleet the size of the ones the Charterlings had sent against Kawyay or Yiye, but it was still a hefty addition to the system's native defenses.
Despite its status as a core system, Ker Hagg was something of a backwater. It was one of the last systems in close proximity to the homeworld to be reunited with Republic simply because most people on Karee had assumed that no one in the original colony had survived. The initial expedition itself had been something of a gamble considering that astronomers on Karee never gathered any definitive evidence of habitable planets. So when the sublight warp ship full of poor settlers had departed and never returned, the Republic had written them off.
The Ker Hagg settlers had lived, however, but only barely. They had been forced to completely cannibalize their warp ship in order to cobble together a sustainable settlement on the single habitable moon of one of the system's two gas giant planets. The colony had not completely lost all knowledge of its founding technologies as some rediscovered colonies had, but what they did keep was of limited extent and jealously guarded. The settlers had certainly never been able to rebuild the technical and manufacturing capacity to create anything so complex as a warp ship. Or any spacecraft, for that matter.
And so the first Republican starship to survey the system since the invention of faster-than-light warp drive had stumbled upon an impoverished but very-much-alive population on the Ker Hagg moon. Reunification had brought a tremendous boost to the standard of living of most of Ker Hagg's peasant population. The colony's aristocracy had not been overly pleased with this development. But the moon's feudal lords hadn't been stupid enough to resist the Republic, and had managed to satisfy themselves with retaining political authority over their subjects, even if their economic leash had been loosened.
"Bridge has set a course for the moon, one-quarter acceleration," the navigation station announced. Hyong overlaid a display of the Exkirid's new course over his sensor chart.
"We're remaining at combat alert," the CIC's commander announced grimly. "The Captain's decided to investigate, but he's not making any assumptions either."
Hyong adjusted his position in his chair and prepared to wait out the slow hours as the Exkirid approached its destination.
The planet which the Ker Hagg settlement orbited was the outermost of the two gas giants. The planet's own orbit around the star Ker Hagg was unusually eccentric, and becoming more so. Every few hundred years it passed close enough to the other planet that the interaction of their gravity perturbed its course even more. The Republic's astronomers estimated that in another ten million years the two planets would actually collide. What would happen then was still subject to speculation, but it would quite certainly be catastrophic for the Ker Hagg settlement, if it still remained.
Ker Hagg was a dim reddish dwarf star, small even by the standards of the inhabited systems of the republic. This was a slight advantage for interstellar travel to and from the system. Even the Republic's most advanced FTL warp drives were not capable of safely folding or unfolding a warp bubble in space which was already distorted by proximity to other large gravity sources, like stars. Ker Hagg's small footprint allowed the Exkirid to transition in almost half the distance the battlecruiser could manage in Karee. That still put the ship more than four light-hours away from the settlement, however, so Hyong had to wait over eight hours before the Exkirid reached the planetary system.
The physics of FTL warp made it technically possible for a vessel to enter or exit a warp bubble at any speed. Practical considerations, however, made it inadvisable to transition back to normal space at a high velocity relative to one's surroundings. The only way a ship could travel at high percentages of light speed was with powerful gravity shielding and point defenses which could detect and destroy incoming debris at extreme ranges. When a ship transitioned into normal space, there was a good chance that some tiny piece of interstellar dust was nearby. And if a ship came out of that transition at 80% of light speed, a collision with such particles could be quite destructive. Not even Kyhyex ship captains were foolhardy enough to risk letting such a danger inside their defensive envelopes.
Of course, if one didn't have any crew on board to worry about, high-velocity transitions could have a certain appeal. The thought of Charterling warp missiles was the reason that almost every inhabited world of the Republic, even out on the fringes, spared little expense to purchase tremendously powerful planetary gravity shields which could activate at a moment's notice. Thus far, there was no evidence that the Charterlings intended to use, or had even constructed, such weapons. But their power would be so terrible that few were willing to take chances.
The Ker Hagg settlement had two shield generators in opposing orbits, each covering a hemisphere of the moon. The shields were only one generation behind current Karee standard. The settlement could not have afforded to purchase such equipment from its own meager trade surplus. The shields had instead been a gift from a previous system Governor; an old politician who'd gotten the job as a comfortable retirement package and had bought the shields out of his own personal fortune.
The shields appeared to be in perfect working order. Even without any weaponry to keep attackers at a distance, it would probably take a battlecruiser like the Exkirid some time to disable the generators. The bubble they projected around the moon made the Ker Hagg settlement the closest thing to an impervious fortress which could be found in the known universe.
Which was hardly comforting knowledge, since it appeared that the settlement had been utterly destroyed.
"Possible detection!" one of the sensor observers announced suddenly. Hyong called up the sensor display on his own monitor. Everyone else in the CIC would be doing the same. After three shifts of absolutely nothing to report, they were all eager for something to distract from their boredom.
The same must have been true for the crew on the battlecruiser's bridge, as well. The voice of the Exkirid's captain rang out over the intercom.
"You see this coming over the horizon, right Commander? I'd like to know what it is."
"We're working on it, Captain," the CIC's commander reported back. He swiveled in his chair to look at the sensor section.
"Ah, yeah," the observer who'd first spoken up, "it's definitely a vehicle. Maybe an aeroshuttle, or just a big aircraft."
"Call it an aeroshuttle, commander," the head of the sensor section said, "based on the altitude. I think the computer will confirm once we've cleared some more angle on the shield."
And sure enough, as the vehicle continued to soar over the horizon and into view of the Exkirid's sensors, a notation appeared on Hyong's display classifying the object as a likely aeroshuttle.
Something tapped the back of his chair. Hyong looked up to see his own station commander giving him an intense look.
"Eyes open, operative," she said, "we're probably going to try to contact it."
"Understood," Hyong said, a little remorsefully. He minimized the sensor display again to focus on his own, still blank, communications monitor.
"Okay, it's definitely an aeroshuttle," the sensor observer said again, "I can see an airlock."
"Have you got a transponder yet?" the CIC's commander asked, sounding frustrated.
"Negative," the head of sensors called back.
"They may not know we're here yet," one of the weapons observers offered.
"Well they should now," Hyong announced dryly, "we're sending a general challenge on broadcast." An indicator icon on his screen pulsed hypnotically.
For a few minutes everyone in the CIC was still as they waited to find out what would happen. While it was possible—even likely—that the gravity shield made it impossible for the aeroshuttle's own sensors to have detected the Exkirid through the distortion, the battlecruiser's comm signals were adjusted to compensate for the shield, and ought to be received without any difficulty.
"The shield is retracting!" someone called. Hyong hadn't known he was holding his breath, but now he exhaled in relief. The diameter of the gravity bubble around the planet, as well as the intensity of the distortion, diminished.
"Incoming transmission," Junior Command Operative Kerexyajuzaw said from behind Hyong. "Official protocols, we're linked up."
Hyong tapped a control on his console, and it felt as if another hush fell upon the CIC. He had only activated his privacy field so that he could listen to the conversation that was about to occur without disturbing others around him. It was entirely possible that there really was quiet in the CIC, however, since many of the others were probably doing the same thing.
The monitor blinked, and Hyong was confronted with the video image of a very fat, very unhappy-looking male. He was not wearing a beret, nor any other piece of uniform clothing with which Hyong was familiar. Instead, much of his face and upper torso was covered in silver and copper jewelry that had been polished to a mirror shine. The metal was purely ornamental, but hung in dense scales, recalling the armored suits which the Ker Hagg colonists had once worn to fight amongst each other. Such armor would have been suicidal among the ancient inhabitants of Karee, but the thin atmosphere of Ker Hagg made flight impossible anyway.
The over-decorated male opened his flabby mouth.
"I am G'Kogu, 958th King of King of Ker Hagg," he said. His Karee Standard sounded harsh and angry in his heavily guttural accent.
Hyong's screen did not show the image of the bridge which the King of Ker Hagg was looking at right now—he had no need to analyze his own crew—but the voice of the Exkirid's captain sounded clearly from the speakers.
"Salutations, G'Kogu. I am Senior Vessel Commander Oreehayiyux, captain of the Republican Battlecruiser Exkirid. We've been dispatched from Home Fleet to investigate possible Charterling attacks on the core worlds. May I presume that Ker Hagg has indeed been attacked?"
"You may, captain," G'Kogu responded. Even with his accent, there was no mistaking his dark tone. "They came two weeks ago. Our picket fleet was worthless." His jewelry shivered as his wings twitched beneath.
Oreehayiyux was silent for a moment, and Hyong imagined the captain wearing a grim expression. "I'm afraid that I will need to review the details of the attack," he said at last. "Is Governor Hisanyoowagung available to speak to me?"
G'Kogu's wings twitched again, but this time in surprise rather than anger. He answered in a careful voice. "The Governor's palace was destroyed in the initial bombardment. We think survivors are… unlikely." He paused, and there seemed to be genuine regret in his eyes. "I am sorry; he was well respected among the citizens here."
If the captain was shocked by this news, it did not show in his voice. "Did anyone on the Governor's military staff survive?"
The King made a negative gesture. "I do have some of my own military advisors aboard," he gestured at something or someone out of the camera's field of view. "But our intelligence is rather limited. You can probably learn as much and more from the sensors on your vessel. Ours have proven inadequate."
"How long have you been aboard that vehicle?" Oreehaiyiyux asked, this time he did sound concerned.
"Since the attack," G'Kogu looked a bit incredulous. "We believe that the Charterlings deployed some sort of chemical weapon and we have been unable to land until we could confirm that the surface is safe." He turned his head slightly, "I am rather hoping that you will permit us to dock with your vessel in the meantime. My family and our servants have been through a great trauma, and we have been forced to live in this cramped shuttle for some time now."
The Exkirid was strictly a spacecraft, it could not have operated within the moon's atmosphere even if the captain had wanted to throw away the freedom to maneuver which space offered the battlecruiser. As a result, they had to wait another hour and a half for the royal aeroshuttle to approach the Exkirid using its own far weaker engines.
Hyong spent most of that time watching and rewatching the recordings of the conversation between Captain Oreehaiyiyx and King G'Kogu. There was something about the video that was bothering Hyong, but he couldn't have said what it was. It merely tickled at the back of his subconscious.
After a while his superior looked away from her own display of the approaching shuttle and nudged Hyong with her foot. "Something interesting about the comm log, operative?" asked.
"I think something is unusual about the King, but I can't say for sure," Hyong admitted with a sigh.
"It's because he doesn't blink." Hyong looked up to see Kerexyajuzaw miming holding open her eyes with her finger claws.
"Really?" Hyong muttered. He turned back to his monitor and started running through the video recording at high speed. G'Kogu did, in fact, blink, but not nearly so often as Hyong felt a normal person would have. "Is that something about the local culture?"
"Not that I know of," Kerexyajuzaw shrugged. "He may think it makes him look more intimidating. I think it's just creepy myself."
Hyong murmured softly to himself as the recording ran out. He scratched his chin and watched the miniaturized display of the King's aeroshuttle making its final approach towards one of the Exkirid's docking ports.
"Is this one of our shuttle designs?" he asked aloud.
"No," an observer at the sensor station replied, "it's a Charterling export model. Why?"
Hyong didn't answer. He zoomed in on a recorded still image of the shuttle, which was now mostly obscured by the battlecruiser's own bulging hull.
"That's not exactly unusual, operative," Kerexyajuzaw said from behind him, "and I don't think captain's going to hold it against them under the circumstances.
"No…" Hyong said distantly, his attention focused elsewhere. He found what he was looking for on the magnified image of the aeroshuttle's hull. The matte coloring made it difficult to see at a glance; but like most large equipment sold by the Charterlings, the aeroshuttle had the logo of the commercial family which had produced it etched into the surface. In this case, Hyong could make out a broken cross inside of a simple circle.
It was like someone had pushed an electrified piece of wire into Hyong's brain. He bolted upright in his chair and punched madly at the controls in front of him, wings half-open in excitement.
It took only a few seconds to call up the recording of King G'Kogu once again and freeze the image at the angle Hyong wanted. There, on the King's right shoulder, was a tiny, polished copper medallion that Hyong had been overlooking as just another piece of jewelry among the rest. But this must have been what was setting off alarms within his subconscious, because the medallion was molded in the same shape as the logo on the aeroshuttle.
"Command Operative!" Hyong shouted. He spun in his chair and expanded his display to show to his head of section behind him. Kerexyajuzaw jumped slightly in alarm, but was professional enough to look at the display and wait for Hyong to explain himself.
"Look at this!" he said, and he brought up the two images side by side, highlighting the symbol he wanted her to notice. "That's the insignia of one of the hub clans, isn't it?"
"Y—yes," Kerexyajuzaw stuttered, but she recovered quickly, "that's Kikidigee-okh…" she trailed off, frowning at Hyong's display. Around them, the CIC had gone very quiet once again.
Noticing the stares, Kerexyajuzaw's wings twitched in irritation, "You're not suggesting the King's made a pact with the Charterlings, operative. There's no way he'd wear that knowingly."
It was Hyong's turn to look consternated. It could be a coincidence, the symbol was a very simple design, and could have some entirely different meaning for the people of Ker Hagg. No self-respecting citizen of the Republic would intentionally cover himself with the markings of the Republic's enemies.
And then the pieces fell together in Hyong's mind. He leapt out of his chair and dug his toe claws into the floor. His wings curled up so quickly that Hyong thought he might have sprained a muscle. He'd never been so frightened before in his life.
For half a second, Kerexyajuzaw looked as if she was about to berate him, but then she seemed to reach the same conclusion Hyong had, and her eyes opened wide. "Blinking…" she muttered.
"Operatives?" the CIC commander's voice boomed, attempting to cut through their haze. "What are you thinking?"
Hyong whirled towards him, forgetting all the formalities of his position, "Sir, we can't let them dock with us!"
"Well they already have," a navigation observer said somewhat snidely.
"We can't let them on the ship!" Hyong shouted. He spun around again and leapt over his console towards the CIC's hatch. "We have to send warriors down there immediately!"
"And do you want to tell me why—"
"It was a simulation," Kerexyajuzaw answered for Hyong, for which he was grateful. "The King's probably dead, too. There are Charterlings on that shuttle!"
Hyong burst through the exit and into the hallway just as everyone in the CIC started shouting at once.
Civilians were often surprised at how spacious the Republic's military starships were. Private vessels, even luxury transports, always did their best to put every available cubic meter of a starship to profitable use. Warships, on the other hand, had different requirements.
Even if every station had triple redundancies, a battlecruiser like the Exkirid had no real need for more than about a hundred actual crewmen. More than that was really a waste of resources that could be better spent crewing other warships. The Exkirid was currently home to 121 individuals. 24 of those were warriors who had no permanent shipboard stations other than as spare bodies for damage control. Their real purpose was to provide security and armed support in the exceedingly rare instances of close quarters combat which occurred in the Republic's war against the Charterlings.
This was normally not a problem. Boarding actions were almost unheard of in the war, and any assault mounted by the warrior contingents would be planned long in advance, allowing them time to assemble and prepare. The warriors certainly had the equipment and the training to repel unexpected shipboard intruders, but there were certain logistical obstacles.
The Exkirid was a starship, which meant its primary engines were of a design capable of creating a sealed warp bubble for faster-than-light travel across the galaxy. The Exkirid's drive was smaller and more efficient than most, but that still made it a rough sphere more than 800 meters in diameter. The rest of the ship's components were arranged as a hemisphere molded around one side of the drive housing, giving the entire battlecruiser an oblong external appearance.
It was a design that meant that 24 warriors, no matter how well-equipped and well-trained, were almost certainly going to be too far away from any crisis which occurred on the ship to arrive as quickly as they needed to. Especially if they received only a few seconds' notice that a crisis was in progress.
Hyong might be able to get there a little faster. The CIC was tucked away on the ventral side of the ship below the drive core. The aeroshuttle was docking at a ventral port. Which was still several hundred meters away at the exterior surface. But at least Hyong had a relatively straight shot, and would not need to circumnavigate the warp drive.
Hyong ran faster than he could ever remember running before. He was sure that he broke every single one of his toe claws against the deck, but he hardly even noticed the pain. As he ran he fumbled with the elastic straps of his combat harness to unfold its coverings over his wings and legs. He was still struggling to adjust the choking pressure around his neck when he reached the nearest ladder tube. Hyong let the neck seal be and jumped headfirst into the tube. He was moving so fast that the transition to zero gravity barely registered.
The tube would take him directly to the outer deck, just a few tens of meters away from the docking port. Hyong couldn't go directly there, however. The Exkirid did have small armories placed strategically around the ship so that the crew could at least get to weapons in the event of an assault. But if Hyong was going to fight Charterlings, he needed more than just a rifle and some courage.
Hyong grabbed a bar with one hand and whipped himself out of the ladder tube at a mid-level deck, where much of the crew's recreation area resided. He landed so hard that he sprained his ankle, and this time Hyong was very aware of the pain. But he couldn't slow down and he forced himself to bear it. He ducked into a perpendicular tube and worked his way along the deck towards the more extensive armory that was his destination.
He reached it just under a minute after his departure from the CIC, but he had to brake by slamming his shoulder into the metal door of a locker. The combat harness absorbed most of the impact, and Hyong desperately wrapped his fingers around the handle and waited for it to confirm his access authorization.
The locker bleeped at him, and the door swung open. Hyong spun with it and pushed his back up against the interior. This was always the most difficult part for Hyong during training exercises, and indeed it took him several tries and a frustrating ten seconds before he felt the ports on the back of his combat harness latch into place.
He wanted to leave immediately, to rip himself away and head back to the tubes. But he forced himself to wait; trying to rush this wouldn't accomplish anything. Finally, after another excruciating five seconds, Hyong heard his equipment whirr, and felt his body fur tingling as power coursed through his combat harness and its fibers responded.
Hyong leaned forward and pulled away from the locker, taking the warrior's glider with him. The device was still in storage mode, and looked simply like an oversized metal backpack. Its mass was several times that of Hyong's own body, and without its dedicated gravity generators to neutralize the weight, it would have snapped Hyong's spine in normal gravity.
This one was functioning in optimal condition, however, as Hyong confirmed as soon as he'd slipped his monocle off his combat harness, over his right eye, and turned on its monitors. Hyong could have moved just as quickly as before, but he was no longer nearly so graceful, and he took extra care stepping back into the tube ladders. If he wasn't cautious about his extra inertia, he could easily crush himself.
Still, he made decent time. Being able to travel in a straight path through the ladder tubes helped, and Hyong made it to the outer deck in another minute and a half.
Someone was waiting for him at the tube's exit.
Hyong managed to dodge right just in time to avoid knocking over Junior Command Operative Kerexyajuzaw. The maneuver did cause him to fumble his landing, but she was sharp enough to catch him before he hit the ground.
"There you are!" she said. She pulled him to his feet with one hand, taking care to keep the rifle in her other pointed safely away. "I thought you'd come straight here!" She looked him up and down, appraising his acquisition. "Probably a good idea, but you want to fix your left foot."
Hyong looked down to see that he had improperly sealed the flaps around his left leg and foot. He paused for a moment to stretch the combat harness' material tight again and secure it correctly this time.
"Are the warriors on their way?" Hyong asked. He peered down the corridor towards the passage they'd have to take to the docking bay. The two of them walked forward quickly but cautiously.
"I think so," Kerexyajuzaw said, "but the Captain wanted us to explain our reasoning. I left it to the Commander, thought you had the right idea."
Hyong felt a little him swell on the inside at this comment. But Kerexyajuzaw must have noticed as well.
"Don't let it go to your head, Operative Hyongyaheek," she growled. "If you're wrong, we're both screwed for this little piece of initiative. I just wish we weren't screwed if you're right, too." She hefted her rifle to her shoulder as they rounded the corner of the passage.
The airlocks for three ventral docking ports curved away ahead of them. Nothing appeared out of the ordinary except the crewman pacing in front of the center door, tapping furiously at his computer. He saw Hyong and Kerexyajuzaw out of the corner of his eye and turned on them
"Hey!" he shouted, waving his arms. "Do you two know what's going on? Am I supposed to be opening this airlock or not? We've been locked and ready to pop for five minutes now!"
If he had noticed the weapons Hyong and Kerexyajuzaw were carrying, he did not seem at all concerned by them. Hyong was just starting to relax a bit to answer the crewman, when the airlock door exploded and hurled the male against the far wall in broken pieces.
Hyong fell backwards and landed on the floor. The flash and blast of the explosion had severely disoriented him, but the monocle had protected his right eye at least. He could see that Kerexyajuzaw had managed to remain on her feet and had her rifle raised and ready. But she was aiming wildly and shaking her head; without a monocle she had probably been totally blinded.
Hyong struggled to his feet, ignoring his feeling of nausea. The dust and debris from the explosion was being sucked away by the air circulators, and Hyong could see that there was another person in the passageway he hadn't seen before. A second crewman appeared to have been leaning in an alcove down past the one who had yelled at Hyong. He had his sidearm out and was aiming it nervously at the blasted hole of the center airlock.
A Charterling stepped through the hole and shot him. The alien had a cannon slung under one arm which made a chuff sound, and the crewman pitched forward with a crater in his chest.
Hyong raised his own sidearm towards the Charterling and squeezed the trigger. Dozens of tiny metal pellets were propelled down the barrel in rapid succession toward his target.
It was not quite as useless as flinging pebbles at the Charterling.
Hyong's sidearm was hopelessly underpowered for the task of actually penetrating a Charterling's tough exoskeleton. The barrage was enough to pulverize the alien's hand, however, and—more importantly—mangle the cannon it was holding.
The Charterling, which had been turning towards Hyong and Kerexyajuzaw, screeched and retreated back through the airlock. Its weapon swinging freely from its straps.
"Okay, that's a few seconds," Kerexyajuzaw said. She had apparently recovered from the shock of the blast. "Can you see how long we have until the warriors get here?"
"Um…" Hyong's mind raced and he began blinking himself through menu displays, trying to remember how to access the warrior's tactical net. Before he could get there, however, a round object the size of Hyong's fist flew through the airlock and clattered onto the surface of the deck, rolling towards him.
Kerexyajuzaw was either a much better shot than Hyong would have guessed, or else she got astoundingly lucky. She fired one round from her rifle, and the tiny cloud of flechettes caught the grenade before it had gone more than a few meters.
Hyong blinked when the grenade exploded with an odd pop. A pinkish haze expanded in a cloud from its remains. Two more grenades sailed through the hatch and into the fog.
"Hoods on!" Kerexyajuzaw shouted. The command tore Hyong out of his momentary stupor, and he clawed at the flaps on the shoulders of his combat harness. For a moment after sealing the material around his face, Hyong felt like he was choking. But the air quickly began to circulate and Hyong tried to slow his breathing enough so that he wouldn't hyperventilate.
More of the translucent mist was pouring out of the other grenades. And Hyong noticed swirls of the stuff being pulled into the circulation vents along the ceiling.
Hyong spun. "Airlock!" he shouted at Kerexyajuzaw. "Open the airlock!"
"What?" she shouted back, her hood muffling her speech.
"We've got to blow the—never mind," he cut himself off and lunged past the Junior Command Operative to just perform the operation himself. As he did so, another Charterling stepped through the holed airlock. This one had some sort of metal orb stuffed into its mouth and clutched between its jaws. Presumably it was some sort of protection from whatever poison was in the gas.
Kerexyajuzaw shot the Charterling. The flechettes crunched horribly against its exoskeleton, but did not penetrate. The Charterling raised a hand weapon to return fire.
Hyong tried to keep his mind focused on his own task. He had ripped open the control panel to one of the unused airlocks and was attempting to override the safeties just as fast as he could. This required him entering his authorization code several times in succession acknowledging that yes, he knew he was trying to open both doors at once; yes, he knew there was nothing docked to the port; and yes, he knew this meant that he was about to vent the atmosphere in his compartment.
The Charterling in the hallway missed its first shot, but tore a great hole in the ceiling above Hyong. The deck rattled around him as he tried to finish opening the airlock. Kerexyajuzaw shot the Charterling again, this time catching it in the eyes on the top of its skull.
Kerexyajuzaw smirked and lowered her rifle slightly, apparently pleased with this shot. And indeed, the Charterling seemed to have been blinded. But this did not stop it from firing.
Two more projectiles ripped out sections of the deck plating. The third one took off Kerexyajuzaw's right leg at the knee. She toppled to the floor, shrieking into her combat harness just as Hyong finished entering his final authorization.
Both interior and exterior hatches split open in the middle and retracted into the walls. Hyong, standing in the center, leaned forward into the breach.
The wind was less powerful than he had anticipated, and Hyong pushed off with his toes slightly as he was propelled outside the ship. The pink fog of gas spiraled out around him, roaring against the fabric of his combat harness.
Hyong brought up his legs to let the momentum carry him into a flip so that he was facing the open airlock behind him. He saw Kerexyajuzaw, apparently unconscious, spin wildly out the hatch, her severed leg pulled along by a shred of fabric still holding it to her combat harness.
Hyong forced himself to ignore her. If she was still alive, they'd be able to recover her after this was over. He had more urgent concerns. Hyong rapidly squeezed and released the toes on both his feet three times.
He could not actually hear his glider opening behind him, but Hyong could definitely feel hum of the machine as it unfolded itself. The light in his peripheral vision also dimmed slightly as the glider's wings obscured his vision.
Gently, Hyong twitched his toes to test the controls. His backward motion stopped. Another twitch and he stopped spinning as well, leaving him still relative to the Exkirid and facing the airlock through which he had escaped.
The air had stopped rushing out of the opening by now. The automatic seals must have deployed around the compartment as they were designed. Hyong felt a grim satisfaction with the knowledge that that much of his strategy had worked, at least.
A shadow filled the open airlock. The Charterling which had been trading fire with Kerexyajuzaw had recovered and was coming to finish his opponents off.
Hyong reached upward with his right arm and grabbed the nozzle which was now projecting out over his shoulder. His monocle had already integrated with the targeting software, and Hyong deliberately moved his crosshair down across the bulky alien squeezing its way through the airlock.
Most of the power for a combat glider's systems came from a matter-antimatter reactor much like the large ones which powered the Exkirid itself. But each of them also contained a small fusion bottle which had only one dedicated purpose.
Individuals of the alien species called Charterlings were notoriously difficult to kill. Their exoskeletons served as a natural body armor which was more resilient than the toughest warship armor produced by the Republic. They could withstand ambient pressure several times greater than fatal levels for Hyong's people, as well as travel unsuited in complete vacuum. Very few compounds were actually poisonous to their biology, and those were only effective in such concentrations that made them impractical to weaponize. A Charterling could survive for half an hour without air at normal function, or could enter hibernation and live for weeks.
The only thing which was truly efficient at killing a Charterling was another Charterling. An average individual could tear strips off plate steel with its fingers as easily as Hyong could tear meat. Charterlings who wanted to kill one of their own usually did so by wrenching off limbs or heads, something the Republic's warriors could also accomplish by machine assistance if any were willing to approach close enough.
Instead, Hyong's people had to settle for other techniques which were slightly less dangerous to a warrior. One of the Charterlings few weaknesses was a vulnerability to heat. They were still tougher than any of Hyong's people in that regard, too, but not by the same nearly insurmountable margin. If one could actually manage to ignite a Charterling in a sufficiently oxygen-rich environment, it would burn quite nicely.
Prior to the war against the Charterlings, the Republic had almost entirely abandoned the use of incendiary anti-personnel weapons as barbaric and cruel. That proscription had been abandoned shortly after the start of the Interstellar War.
Hyong depressed the trigger of his weapon.
Brilliant white light bloomed from the end of the weapon and Hyong shut his unprotected left eye against the glare. The plasma expanded slightly and then was squeezed into a thin tube by a projected magnetic field. Propelled inexorably forward, it took less than a second for the beam to wash over the Charterling in the airlock.
For a moment, it seemed the attack would be ineffective as the superheated particles simply bounced off the alien in a violent spray. But the blue of the Charterling's exoskeleton quickly discolored and began to slough off in glowing flakes which intermixed with the melting metal of the surrounding airlock in an expanding cloud of destruction.
Hyong counted to three and then released the trigger. As the furious glow of his target cooled, Hyong was able to see that the Charterling was still standing in the deformed airlock. It was clearly dead, however. Part of its face was missing and its limbs had been encased in the molten slag around it. Hyong looked at the remains for a few more seconds, and then shuddered.
Impact.
For several seconds, Hyong was not even aware of any pain. He was spinning like a top and sailing away from the hull of the Exkirid. The gravity generators in his glider had automatically compensated for the impulse of the plasma stream, but it would not do the same for external sources of acceleration. It took Hyong far too long to figure out how to stop his spin and properly orient himself again. Even after he'd stopped, his head still felt like it was spinning.
At first, he thought his left arm and wing had simply gone numb, but as he tried to flex the joints an excruciating pain left him breathless. He could feel the left side of his combat harness tightening, constricting the blood flow to that side of his body. The inside of the harness felt sticky.
Hyong looked around to figure out what had happened. He had already traveled back nearly a hundred meters, and was now floating out past the bulk of the aeroshuttle still clamped onto the Exkirid's docking port.
At the front of the aeroshuttle, crouching on top of the cockpit, a Charterling was waving a laser cannon in Hyong's direction.
Hyong had been stupid, he'd let his guard down while still very much in the middle of a fight.
He rolled his tongue and spat blood that was pooling inside his mouth out through his teeth so that it ran down the side of his neck. Then he clamped his good right hand over the nozzle of his plasma projector again.
If the Charterling fired its weapon a second time, Hyong couldn't see. The laser cannon did not produce any visible light, and Hyong never felt a second impact. Hyong's plasma stream struck the Charterling at its feet, running the pincers it was using to grasp the hull of the aeroshuttle. The Charterling dropped its cannon and, without any personal propulsion system, was sent floating helplessly away from the aeroshuttle.
This time, Hyong did not permit himself to relax. He magnified his vision through his monocle and scanned the area. There were more Charterlings crawling across the exterior of the Exkirid. Two of them were already turning to point their weapons at Hyong.
Hyong could feel his consciousness starting to fade around the edges. But somehow this only made him more focused on his task. With his feet, he kicked the glider into high acceleration and a broad arc. As he curved around the Charterlings, he let fly with another long stream of plasma. His fire wasn't nearly so precise this time, but he destroyed the two attempting to shoot him. If he didn't kill them outright, Hyong was sure he had at least injured them seriously enough that death couldn't be far off.
Seeing what had happened to their Comrades, the rest of the Charterlings attempted to point their weapons at Hyong as well. Two of them dropped large devices that Hyong had thought were lasers, but could not have been since the aliens began shooting at him with much smaller projectile weapons instead.
Hyong had too much velocity on them, however. And with his assisted targeting he was able to dispatch them all while the Charterlings were still firing uselessly into the space around him.
The projectiles kept flying after they were all dead, however. Hyong spun around once more to find yet another Charterling, half-concealed within one of the aeroshuttle's external airlocks and firing an automatic gun of some sort.
A distant corner of Hyong's mind told him that he ought to be feeling terrified right now. He didn't, though, he hardly felt anything. Impassively, he squeezed the trigger of his plasma projector once again, and the jet of white flame sped across the empty space to light up his next target.
Hyong had no memory of what he did next. The medics told him that he'd kept firing for several more minutes until he passed out. That he'd melted a hole straight through the aeroshuttle, vaporizing most of its innards in the process. They also told him that he had let himself drift too close to his target, and that he'd given himself severe radiation burns, to the point that his left eye had been rendered useless and would have to be replaced.
That was in addition to the major reconstruction work he'd have to have on his left arm and wing. The fully powered combat harness had been able to absorb enough of the blast to keep the laser from simply snapping Hyong in half. But it hadn't been enough to prevent his limbs from shattering. The blow had burst every blood vessel in his left wing. If the suit hadn't clamped down so hard, Hyong might have drowned in his own blood before anyone could recover him.
By comparison, Junior Command Operative Kerexyajuzaw had come away with only minor injuries. She'd had some tissue damage on the exposed surfaces of her severed leg, but that was easily repaired with artificial flesh grafts. By the time Hyong woke up, she could already move her own leg again.
Even so, Hyong was still lucky: he'd lived. The two technicians he'd met at the docking hatches had died, as had two warriors and an engineer who'd breathed the gas the Charterlings had been flinging around, some sort of neurotoxin.
There had been thirty Charterlings aboard the shuttle in total. Fortunately, their combat tactics hadn't been nearly so sophisticated as their electronic deception. After the initial shock wore off, the Exkirid's warriors had taken just a few minutes to clear them out of the corridors and destroy what remained of their aeroshuttle after Hyong had finished with it.
Hyong's fight had given him a certain degree of shipboard fame, and he was still unsure what to make of this. Various members of the crew had already visited him in the medical ward, leaving him with a small pile of gold coins and spiced meat as demonstrations of their gratitude. It made Hyong uncomfortable, especially the visits from the Exkirid's remaining warriors. He'd personally killed more Charterlings than most of the Republic's warriors ever would, but that had really just been the result of lucky accidents, not any great skill.
Hyong reached out with his right arm and popped another tiny cube of meat into his mouth to savor. He hated being in the medical bed, it forced him to lie on his back, almost completely horizontal and staring up at the ceiling. The awkward position made it difficult to eat food; he'd vomited up the first meal he'd had since the fight by attempting to consume it too quickly.
At least the wrappings the medics had put around his entire left wing and arm were numbing the nerves of that side of his body. Hyong had been stupid enough to ask to see pictures of what his injury looked like; he was glad he didn't have to feel it. As long as he only looked to the right and never tried to do anything with his left hand, he could almost forget about it.
"So what do you think?" a voice asked from across the room.
"About what?" Hyong looked up.
Kerexyajuzaw was eyeing him over the top of a computer. She at least was able to sit up in a chair, even if her leg wasn't quite ready to allow her to stand just yet.
"About the report the Senior Command Operative just gave."
Hyong yawned, "I'm on medical leave, I don't have to have to analyze that stuff anymore."
"You're not curious?" she sounded appalled.
"I'll read it later," Hyong curled his tongue around the cube of meat and tried to enjoy the flavor.
"He thinks the Charterlings weren't part of their regular military. None of their equipment was the usual standard, we've never seen the big railguns they were carrying anywhere before."
"Was it mostly commercial stuff?"
"A good portion looks like variations on export models, yes."
"Kikidigee-ohk clan, like the aeroshuttle?"
"Umm," Kerexyajuzaw tapped at her computer for a moment, and then looked back at him, "yes."
Hyong made an affirmative gesture, "I thought so. It must have been a clan militia; they were way too easy to fight off."
She snorted, "Is that your modesty again?"
But Hyong dismissed the notion, "No. There's no way I should have been able to manage what I did. If they'd been real military, they would have cut me to pieces. They also would have brought more than thirty warriors on one aeroshuttle."
"And what would a Kikidigee-ohk militia be doing here in the core? We hardly ever even see their trade ships; they're way out on the border with the Beta Kyhyex."
Hyong picked up one of his gold coins and rolled it around his fingers for a few moments as he considered this.
"Okay, how does this sound?" He flicked the gold coin at Kerexyajuzaw. To Hyong's delight, she raised one hand and caught it deftly. "They wanted to capture the Exkirid. The Charterlings are worried about the advantage we're building in FTL speeds, so the Kikidigee-ohk decided they'd capture a new model warp drive and make a fortune off of it."
"I guess it could explain the gas," Kerexyajuzaw was now fiddling thoughtfully with the coin, as Hyong had been.
"They didn't want to damage the ship too much, yes."
"But it can't have been an independent operation. All the attacks on the other core worlds were conducted by regular Fleet ships; do you really think they were coordinating with a hub clan? To the point of transporting an armed militia team here?"
"You know, that raises a good question I'm going to have to ask next time someone's down here. That shuttle got here somehow, where did the ships—"
Hyong's question was answered before he could even finish asking. A wailing alarm sounded in the medical ward and warning lights flashed five times around the ceiling. Then the alarms were replaced by the voice of the Exkirid's second-in-command, who sounded entirely too calm for his message.
"Now hear this. We are at full tactical alert. All crew report to combat stations immediately and prepare for battle. We will enter maximum effective firing range of hostile vessels in eighty seconds."
Hyong tried to roll out of his bed, and growled at himself when the motion was checked by the straps still holding him down on the left. He groped at the table beside him for his computer. Across the room, Kerexyajuzaw was staring at her own in horror, but Hyong wanted to see whatever it was for himself.
The CIC's sensor department had anticipated such curiosity, and had conveniently put up a magnified video image of the enemy ship on its top channel. Hyong gaped.
It looked like a crater had been dug out of Ker Hagg II. What had previously been a simple storm within the gas giant's upper atmosphere had exploded into spiraling clouds jets of gas thousands of kilometers long which arced out from the surface before falling back to form miniature atmospheric storms of their own.
In the middle of the crater was a gray-blue sphere, obviously an artificial construction. Overlaid scale marks showed that the object was more than five kilometers in diameter.
It was a Charterling dreadnought.
Karee. Six weeks later.
Hyong's left wing itched. It took an enormous mental effort to resist scratching at it. The first day after he'd begun his regenerative treatment, he'd scratched right through his own flesh. The doctors said he was having a mild allergic reaction to the nano-machines which were swarming through the blood vessels of his left wing assisting in repairs. Apparently the complex molecules were not completely compatible with everyone's immune system. The doctors had offered to bind his wing with a large restraint that would prevent him from scratching, but Hyong had declined. He'd rather have the freedom to get up out of bed on his own—even if it meant he had to bear the itching on his own too.
"I think the first thing I'd like to do after getting out of here," Hyong said, attempting to distract himself with conversation, "is find a rainstorm to fly through."
Kerexyajuzaw looked at him from the chair in the corner. Even though she'd now completely recovered from her own injuries, she was still coming regularly to visit Hyong. Hyong was grateful, he appreciated her company.
"Operative," she said, "while I assure you that I will find it hilarious when you lose control, crash into the ground, and break your other wing; I don't think the Navy will be so amused."
"I don't care," Hyong said defiantly, "I've been grounded long enough. I've earned the right to fly again, and rainstorms are fun."
"I prefer just a nice cloud myself. Makes you feel like you're alone in the air, and doesn't screw so much with your flight."
Hyong snorted. "Clouds are cliché. At least actual rainfall is exciting."
"Well I think I've seen quite enough of your sort of excitement, thank you," she rubbed the spot on her leg where it had been severed.
"Now that you mention it," Hyong turned to look at his bare, pinkish-raw wing, "I think I may have too."
They fell into silence, and Hyong became aware of his itching again. A month and a half of hospitalization to repair a smashed wing; it was absurd. Hyong could have been fully recovered within two weeks of his return to Karee if he'd had the wing removed and replaced with a cloned substitute. But the doctors had made the mistake of giving him a choice, rather than just performing the procedure. Hyong had risked his entire life to save the Exkirid from the Charterlings, but he was too squeamish to volunteer to have his own wing cut off.
With other parts, he'd had no choice. His left eye had been damaged beyond repair. The replacement felt no different, and Hyong appreciated having his full sight restored. The doctors had also replaced a failing lung and given him an artificial spleen: the original having ruptured when he took the shot to his side.
The door to the hospital room opened. Kerexyajuzaw turned her head, but couldn't see who it was around the corner. Hyong had a clear view, but it took him a moment to recognize the older female.
Hyong gaped, "Mistress…"
Mistress Iohur Kareyeki closed the door behind her and walked up to the foot of Hyong's bed. "Hello, Hyong," she said.
No one spoke for a moment. Kerexyajuzaw looked between Hyong and Iohur a few times, and then blinked.
"Um," Hyong said, attempting to recover his poise. He held out his right hand, "Mistress, this is Junior Command Operative Kerexyajuzaw, my superior. Command Operative, this is Iohur Kareyeki, my old school mistress."
Iohur pivoted and bowed politely to Kerexyajuzaw. The Command Operative started blankly for a few moments.
She murmured, "Iohurkare…"
Kerexyajuzaw bolted up out of her chair and onto her feet.
"You're a deontologist!" she stared at Hyong.
Hyong winced. He glanced between the two females, feeling cornered. "Yes," he admitted finally.
Kerexyajuzaw looked horrified. She gave Iohur another shocked stare, and then looked at her own hands for just a moment before throwing them into the air.
"I don't believe it," she muttered.
The Junior Command Operative strode quickly across the room and was out the door within a second. The heavy door took a few more seconds to close shut on its own springs behind her.
Hyong sighed, "There are days that I wish I wasn't, though."
Iohur glanced at the closed door, "If she's willing to let the one detail override all her other judgments about you, then she's not worth your time."
Hyong's wings twitched involuntarily, "Whereas you, Mistress, would never dare to judge someone so quickly."
The comment washed over her. "I'm not seeking to mate with you," she said simply.
Hyong sighed again.
"Why are you here, Mistress Kareyeki?"
Iohur sat in the chair that Kerexyajuzaw had vacated. Once she was settled, she said, "I heard about what you did at Ker Hagg, Hyong, you're quite a hero."
"How did you hear about that?" The public had been informed that there was a battle, but most of the details were still classified.
She waved a hand casually, "Oh the Republic's going to be publicizing your actions and giving you some awards for valor and skill. You're also getting promoted a grade or two."
"Captain Oreehayiyux deserves it more," Hyong said with a modesty that was mostly genuine. "I just killed a handful of Charterlings; he had to hold the ship together against a dreadnought while I was incapacitated."
"He's being rewarded too, the whole crew is. But it seems Oreehayiyux praised you quite highly during his debriefing. President Adohyekeer intends to congratulate you in person."
Hyong made a dissatisfied grunt, "Well I can't say I'm looking forward to that ceremony."
"Isn't that a shame? Especially because I passed his advance team on the way in."
"What?" Hyong ignored the pain in his left wing to sit upright and stare in horror at the door to his room.
The door, however, did not burst open to admit the President of the Republic or any other uninvited notables. Hyong sank back down again and scowled at Iohur.
She smiled pleasantly, "Yes, I expect he'll be here any min—"
The door swung open and a short male with khaki-colored fur and a gold beret strode purposefully into the room. He was follo
Ker Hagg star system, 2030.
On an older ship, the transition would have been imperceptible. The Exkirid was not an older ship. The battlecruiser was less than a year old and was equipped with the very latest model warp drive designed by the Republic's scientists. The drive was 20% smaller than the previous military standard, but almost 15% more powerful, and with enough fine control to create a much tighter warp bubble. That drive was the reason Exkirid had been chosen to make the run to Ker Hagg. For most of the fleet, the journey would have taken a month or more. The Exkirid had arrived in just under three weeks.
Because the warp drive was so new and so powerful, however, the Republic's engineers had not yet finished fine-tuning the internal gravity generators which were supposed to compensate for the shock of transition back to normal space. The result was that the entire battlecruiser shuddered violently as soon as the warp bubble was released and the Exkirid once again became a tangible part of the universe.
Ordinary Operative Hyong Yaheek of the Republican Intelligence Service had braced himself for the transition by grasping a handlebar by his chair. But while this did prevent him from falling completely out of his seat, it also caused him to jam one of his finger claws against the handlebar's mounting. Hyong hissed with pain and clutched the injured finger tightly in his other hand.
Fortunately for Hyong, however, his was not the worst injury. Junior Weapons Controller Shregrikyeden had allowed his head to whip forward and crash into his console—which, fortunately, was in safe mode. Hyong harbored no particular dislike for Shregrikyeden; he was a reasonably competent soldier, if not especially bright. Right now, however, Hyong was glad the Weapons Controller was the one earning the glares of the various Command Officers in the Exkirid's CIC.
"Transition complete," one of the navigation observers announced dryly. Shregrikyeden received a few more sneers as he rubbed his forehead before everyone in the CIC had turned his attention to his own instruments.
For Hyong, this did not require much in the way of concentration. He was currently backing up the Communications station on the bridge. This was a more interesting responsibility than backing up, say, weapons, but not by very much. And it certainly wasn't very interesting when there weren't any comm signals to monitor. Hyong spent a minute or two confirming that the Exkirid was not, in fact, detecting any intelligible signals of any kind. Then he shrunk the Communications display into a tiny corner of the monitor and called up the sensor feeds to see if they showed anything more interesting.
They did.
"Well, the moon's got an active shield running, at least," the head of the sensor section observed.
"There's nothing coming out of it, though," whined Hyong's own superior, Junior Command Operative Kerexyajuzaw, from her seat above and behind him.
"I don't see any large orbitals, either," one of the junior sensor observers piped up. "Obviously the shields are there, but if they've got any weapons or warehouses or anything, we're not picking them up. And we ought to at this range."
"They've been here." The Junior Commander in charge of the weapons station was showing a deeper scowl now than he had given Shregrikyeden.
"Assumptions, Yewyingriker," rumbled the CIC's commander, from his position at the back of the center.
Hyong agreed with Junior Commander Yewyingriker. But even so, the CIC's commander was right. It was not merely prudent for the soldiers here to avoid making assumptions, it was their duty. The CIC was a source of information and analysis for the officers on the Bridge. It was then those officers' duty to make judgment calls based on that information. The CIC had to maintain strict objectivity, or else risk compromising the decisions of the command crew. Hyong felt confident in his ability to avoid creeping bias into his own reports—even if a large part of the reason why was that he had nothing to report.
The comm monitor was pulsing now, but it was merely displaying outgoing communications. The Exkirid was searching for any responsive individual or automaton in the Ker Hagg system, so far without a response. Although this did not necessarily mean anything yet, since the system's only inhabited moon was several light-hours away.
Still, it was Hyong's job to keep an eye on the communications. He maximized the display again to review all the outgoing messages and make sure there weren't any obvious errors which might affect the results. Everything appeared to be in order, however, and eventually Hyong switched back to gazing at the sensors.
The lack of signals was worrisome, but it was not unexpected.
Four weeks ago a freighter had warped into the Republic's capital system. The freighter had fled the Kawyay system a week ago, after a Charterling battlefleet had dropped into the system. Kawyay was a core system of the Republic, and as such had a larger defense fleet than many others. But after a day without further news, the Republic had detached a heavy task force from the Home Fleet and sent it off to Kawyay. The hope was that the system's fleet was merely too weakened to risk detaching any of its combat power to report home. Still, the Republican Navy made sure its reinforcements were strong enough to win back the system if that proved necessary.
Less than a day after the taskforce had departed, however, another vessel arrived, this one a military courier from Yiye, another core system. The courier brought news of a second Charterling battlefleet which had appeared and begun skirmishing with Yiye's defense fleet.
The Navy was still debating the dispatch of reinforcements to counter this second attack when another FTL ship arrived to report an assault on a third system in the Republican core, Nyandek.
That made up the Navy's mind. If there was a large scale Charterling attack underway against the very heart of the Republic, then Home Fleet could not afford to detach any more of its heavy units which might be needed to defend Karee. The Fleet was put on high alert, and a handful of fast, expendable ships were tasked with probing the other core systems to discover if any more had been attacked but were unable to send a message.
Ker Hagg was one of the more distant core systems, which was why the Navy had sent a ship with the new drive system. But it also did not have a very hefty defense fleet on station, which was why the Navy had sent the Exkirid. The battlecruiser could not stand off a fleet the size of the ones the Charterlings had sent against Kawyay or Yiye, but it was still a hefty addition to the system's native defenses.
Despite its status as a core system, Ker Hagg was something of a backwater. It was one of the last systems in close proximity to the homeworld to be reunited with Republic simply because most people on Karee had assumed that no one in the original colony had survived. The initial expedition itself had been something of a gamble considering that astronomers on Karee never gathered any definitive evidence of habitable planets. So when the sublight warp ship full of poor settlers had departed and never returned, the Republic had written them off.
The Ker Hagg settlers had lived, however, but only barely. They had been forced to completely cannibalize their warp ship in order to cobble together a sustainable settlement on the single habitable moon of one of the system's two gas giant planets. The colony had not completely lost all knowledge of its founding technologies as some rediscovered colonies had, but what they did keep was of limited extent and jealously guarded. The settlers had certainly never been able to rebuild the technical and manufacturing capacity to create anything so complex as a warp ship. Or any spacecraft, for that matter.
And so the first Republican starship to survey the system since the invention of faster-than-light warp drive had stumbled upon an impoverished but very-much-alive population on the Ker Hagg moon. Reunification had brought a tremendous boost to the standard of living of most of Ker Hagg's peasant population. The colony's aristocracy had not been overly pleased with this development. But the moon's feudal lords hadn't been stupid enough to resist the Republic, and had managed to satisfy themselves with retaining political authority over their subjects, even if their economic leash had been loosened.
"Bridge has set a course for the moon, one-quarter acceleration," the navigation station announced. Hyong overlaid a display of the Exkirid's new course over his sensor chart.
"We're remaining at combat alert," the CIC's commander announced grimly. "The Captain's decided to investigate, but he's not making any assumptions either."
Hyong adjusted his position in his chair and prepared to wait out the slow hours as the Exkirid approached its destination.
* * *
The planet which the Ker Hagg settlement orbited was the outermost of the two gas giants. The planet's own orbit around the star Ker Hagg was unusually eccentric, and becoming more so. Every few hundred years it passed close enough to the other planet that the interaction of their gravity perturbed its course even more. The Republic's astronomers estimated that in another ten million years the two planets would actually collide. What would happen then was still subject to speculation, but it would quite certainly be catastrophic for the Ker Hagg settlement, if it still remained.
Ker Hagg was a dim reddish dwarf star, small even by the standards of the inhabited systems of the republic. This was a slight advantage for interstellar travel to and from the system. Even the Republic's most advanced FTL warp drives were not capable of safely folding or unfolding a warp bubble in space which was already distorted by proximity to other large gravity sources, like stars. Ker Hagg's small footprint allowed the Exkirid to transition in almost half the distance the battlecruiser could manage in Karee. That still put the ship more than four light-hours away from the settlement, however, so Hyong had to wait over eight hours before the Exkirid reached the planetary system.
The physics of FTL warp made it technically possible for a vessel to enter or exit a warp bubble at any speed. Practical considerations, however, made it inadvisable to transition back to normal space at a high velocity relative to one's surroundings. The only way a ship could travel at high percentages of light speed was with powerful gravity shielding and point defenses which could detect and destroy incoming debris at extreme ranges. When a ship transitioned into normal space, there was a good chance that some tiny piece of interstellar dust was nearby. And if a ship came out of that transition at 80% of light speed, a collision with such particles could be quite destructive. Not even Kyhyex ship captains were foolhardy enough to risk letting such a danger inside their defensive envelopes.
Of course, if one didn't have any crew on board to worry about, high-velocity transitions could have a certain appeal. The thought of Charterling warp missiles was the reason that almost every inhabited world of the Republic, even out on the fringes, spared little expense to purchase tremendously powerful planetary gravity shields which could activate at a moment's notice. Thus far, there was no evidence that the Charterlings intended to use, or had even constructed, such weapons. But their power would be so terrible that few were willing to take chances.
The Ker Hagg settlement had two shield generators in opposing orbits, each covering a hemisphere of the moon. The shields were only one generation behind current Karee standard. The settlement could not have afforded to purchase such equipment from its own meager trade surplus. The shields had instead been a gift from a previous system Governor; an old politician who'd gotten the job as a comfortable retirement package and had bought the shields out of his own personal fortune.
The shields appeared to be in perfect working order. Even without any weaponry to keep attackers at a distance, it would probably take a battlecruiser like the Exkirid some time to disable the generators. The bubble they projected around the moon made the Ker Hagg settlement the closest thing to an impervious fortress which could be found in the known universe.
Which was hardly comforting knowledge, since it appeared that the settlement had been utterly destroyed.
"Possible detection!" one of the sensor observers announced suddenly. Hyong called up the sensor display on his own monitor. Everyone else in the CIC would be doing the same. After three shifts of absolutely nothing to report, they were all eager for something to distract from their boredom.
The same must have been true for the crew on the battlecruiser's bridge, as well. The voice of the Exkirid's captain rang out over the intercom.
"You see this coming over the horizon, right Commander? I'd like to know what it is."
"We're working on it, Captain," the CIC's commander reported back. He swiveled in his chair to look at the sensor section.
"Ah, yeah," the observer who'd first spoken up, "it's definitely a vehicle. Maybe an aeroshuttle, or just a big aircraft."
"Call it an aeroshuttle, commander," the head of the sensor section said, "based on the altitude. I think the computer will confirm once we've cleared some more angle on the shield."
And sure enough, as the vehicle continued to soar over the horizon and into view of the Exkirid's sensors, a notation appeared on Hyong's display classifying the object as a likely aeroshuttle.
Something tapped the back of his chair. Hyong looked up to see his own station commander giving him an intense look.
"Eyes open, operative," she said, "we're probably going to try to contact it."
"Understood," Hyong said, a little remorsefully. He minimized the sensor display again to focus on his own, still blank, communications monitor.
"Okay, it's definitely an aeroshuttle," the sensor observer said again, "I can see an airlock."
"Have you got a transponder yet?" the CIC's commander asked, sounding frustrated.
"Negative," the head of sensors called back.
"They may not know we're here yet," one of the weapons observers offered.
"Well they should now," Hyong announced dryly, "we're sending a general challenge on broadcast." An indicator icon on his screen pulsed hypnotically.
For a few minutes everyone in the CIC was still as they waited to find out what would happen. While it was possible—even likely—that the gravity shield made it impossible for the aeroshuttle's own sensors to have detected the Exkirid through the distortion, the battlecruiser's comm signals were adjusted to compensate for the shield, and ought to be received without any difficulty.
"The shield is retracting!" someone called. Hyong hadn't known he was holding his breath, but now he exhaled in relief. The diameter of the gravity bubble around the planet, as well as the intensity of the distortion, diminished.
"Incoming transmission," Junior Command Operative Kerexyajuzaw said from behind Hyong. "Official protocols, we're linked up."
Hyong tapped a control on his console, and it felt as if another hush fell upon the CIC. He had only activated his privacy field so that he could listen to the conversation that was about to occur without disturbing others around him. It was entirely possible that there really was quiet in the CIC, however, since many of the others were probably doing the same thing.
The monitor blinked, and Hyong was confronted with the video image of a very fat, very unhappy-looking male. He was not wearing a beret, nor any other piece of uniform clothing with which Hyong was familiar. Instead, much of his face and upper torso was covered in silver and copper jewelry that had been polished to a mirror shine. The metal was purely ornamental, but hung in dense scales, recalling the armored suits which the Ker Hagg colonists had once worn to fight amongst each other. Such armor would have been suicidal among the ancient inhabitants of Karee, but the thin atmosphere of Ker Hagg made flight impossible anyway.
The over-decorated male opened his flabby mouth.
"I am G'Kogu, 958th King of King of Ker Hagg," he said. His Karee Standard sounded harsh and angry in his heavily guttural accent.
Hyong's screen did not show the image of the bridge which the King of Ker Hagg was looking at right now—he had no need to analyze his own crew—but the voice of the Exkirid's captain sounded clearly from the speakers.
"Salutations, G'Kogu. I am Senior Vessel Commander Oreehayiyux, captain of the Republican Battlecruiser Exkirid. We've been dispatched from Home Fleet to investigate possible Charterling attacks on the core worlds. May I presume that Ker Hagg has indeed been attacked?"
"You may, captain," G'Kogu responded. Even with his accent, there was no mistaking his dark tone. "They came two weeks ago. Our picket fleet was worthless." His jewelry shivered as his wings twitched beneath.
Oreehayiyux was silent for a moment, and Hyong imagined the captain wearing a grim expression. "I'm afraid that I will need to review the details of the attack," he said at last. "Is Governor Hisanyoowagung available to speak to me?"
G'Kogu's wings twitched again, but this time in surprise rather than anger. He answered in a careful voice. "The Governor's palace was destroyed in the initial bombardment. We think survivors are… unlikely." He paused, and there seemed to be genuine regret in his eyes. "I am sorry; he was well respected among the citizens here."
If the captain was shocked by this news, it did not show in his voice. "Did anyone on the Governor's military staff survive?"
The King made a negative gesture. "I do have some of my own military advisors aboard," he gestured at something or someone out of the camera's field of view. "But our intelligence is rather limited. You can probably learn as much and more from the sensors on your vessel. Ours have proven inadequate."
"How long have you been aboard that vehicle?" Oreehaiyiyux asked, this time he did sound concerned.
"Since the attack," G'Kogu looked a bit incredulous. "We believe that the Charterlings deployed some sort of chemical weapon and we have been unable to land until we could confirm that the surface is safe." He turned his head slightly, "I am rather hoping that you will permit us to dock with your vessel in the meantime. My family and our servants have been through a great trauma, and we have been forced to live in this cramped shuttle for some time now."
* * *
The Exkirid was strictly a spacecraft, it could not have operated within the moon's atmosphere even if the captain had wanted to throw away the freedom to maneuver which space offered the battlecruiser. As a result, they had to wait another hour and a half for the royal aeroshuttle to approach the Exkirid using its own far weaker engines.
Hyong spent most of that time watching and rewatching the recordings of the conversation between Captain Oreehaiyiyx and King G'Kogu. There was something about the video that was bothering Hyong, but he couldn't have said what it was. It merely tickled at the back of his subconscious.
After a while his superior looked away from her own display of the approaching shuttle and nudged Hyong with her foot. "Something interesting about the comm log, operative?" asked.
"I think something is unusual about the King, but I can't say for sure," Hyong admitted with a sigh.
"It's because he doesn't blink." Hyong looked up to see Kerexyajuzaw miming holding open her eyes with her finger claws.
"Really?" Hyong muttered. He turned back to his monitor and started running through the video recording at high speed. G'Kogu did, in fact, blink, but not nearly so often as Hyong felt a normal person would have. "Is that something about the local culture?"
"Not that I know of," Kerexyajuzaw shrugged. "He may think it makes him look more intimidating. I think it's just creepy myself."
Hyong murmured softly to himself as the recording ran out. He scratched his chin and watched the miniaturized display of the King's aeroshuttle making its final approach towards one of the Exkirid's docking ports.
"Is this one of our shuttle designs?" he asked aloud.
"No," an observer at the sensor station replied, "it's a Charterling export model. Why?"
Hyong didn't answer. He zoomed in on a recorded still image of the shuttle, which was now mostly obscured by the battlecruiser's own bulging hull.
"That's not exactly unusual, operative," Kerexyajuzaw said from behind him, "and I don't think captain's going to hold it against them under the circumstances.
"No…" Hyong said distantly, his attention focused elsewhere. He found what he was looking for on the magnified image of the aeroshuttle's hull. The matte coloring made it difficult to see at a glance; but like most large equipment sold by the Charterlings, the aeroshuttle had the logo of the commercial family which had produced it etched into the surface. In this case, Hyong could make out a broken cross inside of a simple circle.
It was like someone had pushed an electrified piece of wire into Hyong's brain. He bolted upright in his chair and punched madly at the controls in front of him, wings half-open in excitement.
It took only a few seconds to call up the recording of King G'Kogu once again and freeze the image at the angle Hyong wanted. There, on the King's right shoulder, was a tiny, polished copper medallion that Hyong had been overlooking as just another piece of jewelry among the rest. But this must have been what was setting off alarms within his subconscious, because the medallion was molded in the same shape as the logo on the aeroshuttle.
"Command Operative!" Hyong shouted. He spun in his chair and expanded his display to show to his head of section behind him. Kerexyajuzaw jumped slightly in alarm, but was professional enough to look at the display and wait for Hyong to explain himself.
"Look at this!" he said, and he brought up the two images side by side, highlighting the symbol he wanted her to notice. "That's the insignia of one of the hub clans, isn't it?"
"Y—yes," Kerexyajuzaw stuttered, but she recovered quickly, "that's Kikidigee-okh…" she trailed off, frowning at Hyong's display. Around them, the CIC had gone very quiet once again.
Noticing the stares, Kerexyajuzaw's wings twitched in irritation, "You're not suggesting the King's made a pact with the Charterlings, operative. There's no way he'd wear that knowingly."
It was Hyong's turn to look consternated. It could be a coincidence, the symbol was a very simple design, and could have some entirely different meaning for the people of Ker Hagg. No self-respecting citizen of the Republic would intentionally cover himself with the markings of the Republic's enemies.
And then the pieces fell together in Hyong's mind. He leapt out of his chair and dug his toe claws into the floor. His wings curled up so quickly that Hyong thought he might have sprained a muscle. He'd never been so frightened before in his life.
For half a second, Kerexyajuzaw looked as if she was about to berate him, but then she seemed to reach the same conclusion Hyong had, and her eyes opened wide. "Blinking…" she muttered.
"Operatives?" the CIC commander's voice boomed, attempting to cut through their haze. "What are you thinking?"
Hyong whirled towards him, forgetting all the formalities of his position, "Sir, we can't let them dock with us!"
"Well they already have," a navigation observer said somewhat snidely.
"We can't let them on the ship!" Hyong shouted. He spun around again and leapt over his console towards the CIC's hatch. "We have to send warriors down there immediately!"
"And do you want to tell me why—"
"It was a simulation," Kerexyajuzaw answered for Hyong, for which he was grateful. "The King's probably dead, too. There are Charterlings on that shuttle!"
Hyong burst through the exit and into the hallway just as everyone in the CIC started shouting at once.
* * *
Civilians were often surprised at how spacious the Republic's military starships were. Private vessels, even luxury transports, always did their best to put every available cubic meter of a starship to profitable use. Warships, on the other hand, had different requirements.
Even if every station had triple redundancies, a battlecruiser like the Exkirid had no real need for more than about a hundred actual crewmen. More than that was really a waste of resources that could be better spent crewing other warships. The Exkirid was currently home to 121 individuals. 24 of those were warriors who had no permanent shipboard stations other than as spare bodies for damage control. Their real purpose was to provide security and armed support in the exceedingly rare instances of close quarters combat which occurred in the Republic's war against the Charterlings.
This was normally not a problem. Boarding actions were almost unheard of in the war, and any assault mounted by the warrior contingents would be planned long in advance, allowing them time to assemble and prepare. The warriors certainly had the equipment and the training to repel unexpected shipboard intruders, but there were certain logistical obstacles.
The Exkirid was a starship, which meant its primary engines were of a design capable of creating a sealed warp bubble for faster-than-light travel across the galaxy. The Exkirid's drive was smaller and more efficient than most, but that still made it a rough sphere more than 800 meters in diameter. The rest of the ship's components were arranged as a hemisphere molded around one side of the drive housing, giving the entire battlecruiser an oblong external appearance.
It was a design that meant that 24 warriors, no matter how well-equipped and well-trained, were almost certainly going to be too far away from any crisis which occurred on the ship to arrive as quickly as they needed to. Especially if they received only a few seconds' notice that a crisis was in progress.
Hyong might be able to get there a little faster. The CIC was tucked away on the ventral side of the ship below the drive core. The aeroshuttle was docking at a ventral port. Which was still several hundred meters away at the exterior surface. But at least Hyong had a relatively straight shot, and would not need to circumnavigate the warp drive.
Hyong ran faster than he could ever remember running before. He was sure that he broke every single one of his toe claws against the deck, but he hardly even noticed the pain. As he ran he fumbled with the elastic straps of his combat harness to unfold its coverings over his wings and legs. He was still struggling to adjust the choking pressure around his neck when he reached the nearest ladder tube. Hyong let the neck seal be and jumped headfirst into the tube. He was moving so fast that the transition to zero gravity barely registered.
The tube would take him directly to the outer deck, just a few tens of meters away from the docking port. Hyong couldn't go directly there, however. The Exkirid did have small armories placed strategically around the ship so that the crew could at least get to weapons in the event of an assault. But if Hyong was going to fight Charterlings, he needed more than just a rifle and some courage.
Hyong grabbed a bar with one hand and whipped himself out of the ladder tube at a mid-level deck, where much of the crew's recreation area resided. He landed so hard that he sprained his ankle, and this time Hyong was very aware of the pain. But he couldn't slow down and he forced himself to bear it. He ducked into a perpendicular tube and worked his way along the deck towards the more extensive armory that was his destination.
He reached it just under a minute after his departure from the CIC, but he had to brake by slamming his shoulder into the metal door of a locker. The combat harness absorbed most of the impact, and Hyong desperately wrapped his fingers around the handle and waited for it to confirm his access authorization.
The locker bleeped at him, and the door swung open. Hyong spun with it and pushed his back up against the interior. This was always the most difficult part for Hyong during training exercises, and indeed it took him several tries and a frustrating ten seconds before he felt the ports on the back of his combat harness latch into place.
He wanted to leave immediately, to rip himself away and head back to the tubes. But he forced himself to wait; trying to rush this wouldn't accomplish anything. Finally, after another excruciating five seconds, Hyong heard his equipment whirr, and felt his body fur tingling as power coursed through his combat harness and its fibers responded.
Hyong leaned forward and pulled away from the locker, taking the warrior's glider with him. The device was still in storage mode, and looked simply like an oversized metal backpack. Its mass was several times that of Hyong's own body, and without its dedicated gravity generators to neutralize the weight, it would have snapped Hyong's spine in normal gravity.
This one was functioning in optimal condition, however, as Hyong confirmed as soon as he'd slipped his monocle off his combat harness, over his right eye, and turned on its monitors. Hyong could have moved just as quickly as before, but he was no longer nearly so graceful, and he took extra care stepping back into the tube ladders. If he wasn't cautious about his extra inertia, he could easily crush himself.
Still, he made decent time. Being able to travel in a straight path through the ladder tubes helped, and Hyong made it to the outer deck in another minute and a half.
Someone was waiting for him at the tube's exit.
Hyong managed to dodge right just in time to avoid knocking over Junior Command Operative Kerexyajuzaw. The maneuver did cause him to fumble his landing, but she was sharp enough to catch him before he hit the ground.
"There you are!" she said. She pulled him to his feet with one hand, taking care to keep the rifle in her other pointed safely away. "I thought you'd come straight here!" She looked him up and down, appraising his acquisition. "Probably a good idea, but you want to fix your left foot."
Hyong looked down to see that he had improperly sealed the flaps around his left leg and foot. He paused for a moment to stretch the combat harness' material tight again and secure it correctly this time.
"Are the warriors on their way?" Hyong asked. He peered down the corridor towards the passage they'd have to take to the docking bay. The two of them walked forward quickly but cautiously.
"I think so," Kerexyajuzaw said, "but the Captain wanted us to explain our reasoning. I left it to the Commander, thought you had the right idea."
Hyong felt a little him swell on the inside at this comment. But Kerexyajuzaw must have noticed as well.
"Don't let it go to your head, Operative Hyongyaheek," she growled. "If you're wrong, we're both screwed for this little piece of initiative. I just wish we weren't screwed if you're right, too." She hefted her rifle to her shoulder as they rounded the corner of the passage.
The airlocks for three ventral docking ports curved away ahead of them. Nothing appeared out of the ordinary except the crewman pacing in front of the center door, tapping furiously at his computer. He saw Hyong and Kerexyajuzaw out of the corner of his eye and turned on them
"Hey!" he shouted, waving his arms. "Do you two know what's going on? Am I supposed to be opening this airlock or not? We've been locked and ready to pop for five minutes now!"
If he had noticed the weapons Hyong and Kerexyajuzaw were carrying, he did not seem at all concerned by them. Hyong was just starting to relax a bit to answer the crewman, when the airlock door exploded and hurled the male against the far wall in broken pieces.
Hyong fell backwards and landed on the floor. The flash and blast of the explosion had severely disoriented him, but the monocle had protected his right eye at least. He could see that Kerexyajuzaw had managed to remain on her feet and had her rifle raised and ready. But she was aiming wildly and shaking her head; without a monocle she had probably been totally blinded.
Hyong struggled to his feet, ignoring his feeling of nausea. The dust and debris from the explosion was being sucked away by the air circulators, and Hyong could see that there was another person in the passageway he hadn't seen before. A second crewman appeared to have been leaning in an alcove down past the one who had yelled at Hyong. He had his sidearm out and was aiming it nervously at the blasted hole of the center airlock.
A Charterling stepped through the hole and shot him. The alien had a cannon slung under one arm which made a chuff sound, and the crewman pitched forward with a crater in his chest.
Hyong raised his own sidearm towards the Charterling and squeezed the trigger. Dozens of tiny metal pellets were propelled down the barrel in rapid succession toward his target.
It was not quite as useless as flinging pebbles at the Charterling.
Hyong's sidearm was hopelessly underpowered for the task of actually penetrating a Charterling's tough exoskeleton. The barrage was enough to pulverize the alien's hand, however, and—more importantly—mangle the cannon it was holding.
The Charterling, which had been turning towards Hyong and Kerexyajuzaw, screeched and retreated back through the airlock. Its weapon swinging freely from its straps.
"Okay, that's a few seconds," Kerexyajuzaw said. She had apparently recovered from the shock of the blast. "Can you see how long we have until the warriors get here?"
"Um…" Hyong's mind raced and he began blinking himself through menu displays, trying to remember how to access the warrior's tactical net. Before he could get there, however, a round object the size of Hyong's fist flew through the airlock and clattered onto the surface of the deck, rolling towards him.
Kerexyajuzaw was either a much better shot than Hyong would have guessed, or else she got astoundingly lucky. She fired one round from her rifle, and the tiny cloud of flechettes caught the grenade before it had gone more than a few meters.
Hyong blinked when the grenade exploded with an odd pop. A pinkish haze expanded in a cloud from its remains. Two more grenades sailed through the hatch and into the fog.
"Hoods on!" Kerexyajuzaw shouted. The command tore Hyong out of his momentary stupor, and he clawed at the flaps on the shoulders of his combat harness. For a moment after sealing the material around his face, Hyong felt like he was choking. But the air quickly began to circulate and Hyong tried to slow his breathing enough so that he wouldn't hyperventilate.
More of the translucent mist was pouring out of the other grenades. And Hyong noticed swirls of the stuff being pulled into the circulation vents along the ceiling.
Hyong spun. "Airlock!" he shouted at Kerexyajuzaw. "Open the airlock!"
"What?" she shouted back, her hood muffling her speech.
"We've got to blow the—never mind," he cut himself off and lunged past the Junior Command Operative to just perform the operation himself. As he did so, another Charterling stepped through the holed airlock. This one had some sort of metal orb stuffed into its mouth and clutched between its jaws. Presumably it was some sort of protection from whatever poison was in the gas.
Kerexyajuzaw shot the Charterling. The flechettes crunched horribly against its exoskeleton, but did not penetrate. The Charterling raised a hand weapon to return fire.
Hyong tried to keep his mind focused on his own task. He had ripped open the control panel to one of the unused airlocks and was attempting to override the safeties just as fast as he could. This required him entering his authorization code several times in succession acknowledging that yes, he knew he was trying to open both doors at once; yes, he knew there was nothing docked to the port; and yes, he knew this meant that he was about to vent the atmosphere in his compartment.
The Charterling in the hallway missed its first shot, but tore a great hole in the ceiling above Hyong. The deck rattled around him as he tried to finish opening the airlock. Kerexyajuzaw shot the Charterling again, this time catching it in the eyes on the top of its skull.
Kerexyajuzaw smirked and lowered her rifle slightly, apparently pleased with this shot. And indeed, the Charterling seemed to have been blinded. But this did not stop it from firing.
Two more projectiles ripped out sections of the deck plating. The third one took off Kerexyajuzaw's right leg at the knee. She toppled to the floor, shrieking into her combat harness just as Hyong finished entering his final authorization.
Both interior and exterior hatches split open in the middle and retracted into the walls. Hyong, standing in the center, leaned forward into the breach.
The wind was less powerful than he had anticipated, and Hyong pushed off with his toes slightly as he was propelled outside the ship. The pink fog of gas spiraled out around him, roaring against the fabric of his combat harness.
Hyong brought up his legs to let the momentum carry him into a flip so that he was facing the open airlock behind him. He saw Kerexyajuzaw, apparently unconscious, spin wildly out the hatch, her severed leg pulled along by a shred of fabric still holding it to her combat harness.
Hyong forced himself to ignore her. If she was still alive, they'd be able to recover her after this was over. He had more urgent concerns. Hyong rapidly squeezed and released the toes on both his feet three times.
He could not actually hear his glider opening behind him, but Hyong could definitely feel hum of the machine as it unfolded itself. The light in his peripheral vision also dimmed slightly as the glider's wings obscured his vision.
Gently, Hyong twitched his toes to test the controls. His backward motion stopped. Another twitch and he stopped spinning as well, leaving him still relative to the Exkirid and facing the airlock through which he had escaped.
The air had stopped rushing out of the opening by now. The automatic seals must have deployed around the compartment as they were designed. Hyong felt a grim satisfaction with the knowledge that that much of his strategy had worked, at least.
A shadow filled the open airlock. The Charterling which had been trading fire with Kerexyajuzaw had recovered and was coming to finish his opponents off.
Hyong reached upward with his right arm and grabbed the nozzle which was now projecting out over his shoulder. His monocle had already integrated with the targeting software, and Hyong deliberately moved his crosshair down across the bulky alien squeezing its way through the airlock.
Most of the power for a combat glider's systems came from a matter-antimatter reactor much like the large ones which powered the Exkirid itself. But each of them also contained a small fusion bottle which had only one dedicated purpose.
Individuals of the alien species called Charterlings were notoriously difficult to kill. Their exoskeletons served as a natural body armor which was more resilient than the toughest warship armor produced by the Republic. They could withstand ambient pressure several times greater than fatal levels for Hyong's people, as well as travel unsuited in complete vacuum. Very few compounds were actually poisonous to their biology, and those were only effective in such concentrations that made them impractical to weaponize. A Charterling could survive for half an hour without air at normal function, or could enter hibernation and live for weeks.
The only thing which was truly efficient at killing a Charterling was another Charterling. An average individual could tear strips off plate steel with its fingers as easily as Hyong could tear meat. Charterlings who wanted to kill one of their own usually did so by wrenching off limbs or heads, something the Republic's warriors could also accomplish by machine assistance if any were willing to approach close enough.
Instead, Hyong's people had to settle for other techniques which were slightly less dangerous to a warrior. One of the Charterlings few weaknesses was a vulnerability to heat. They were still tougher than any of Hyong's people in that regard, too, but not by the same nearly insurmountable margin. If one could actually manage to ignite a Charterling in a sufficiently oxygen-rich environment, it would burn quite nicely.
Prior to the war against the Charterlings, the Republic had almost entirely abandoned the use of incendiary anti-personnel weapons as barbaric and cruel. That proscription had been abandoned shortly after the start of the Interstellar War.
Hyong depressed the trigger of his weapon.
Brilliant white light bloomed from the end of the weapon and Hyong shut his unprotected left eye against the glare. The plasma expanded slightly and then was squeezed into a thin tube by a projected magnetic field. Propelled inexorably forward, it took less than a second for the beam to wash over the Charterling in the airlock.
For a moment, it seemed the attack would be ineffective as the superheated particles simply bounced off the alien in a violent spray. But the blue of the Charterling's exoskeleton quickly discolored and began to slough off in glowing flakes which intermixed with the melting metal of the surrounding airlock in an expanding cloud of destruction.
Hyong counted to three and then released the trigger. As the furious glow of his target cooled, Hyong was able to see that the Charterling was still standing in the deformed airlock. It was clearly dead, however. Part of its face was missing and its limbs had been encased in the molten slag around it. Hyong looked at the remains for a few more seconds, and then shuddered.
Impact.
For several seconds, Hyong was not even aware of any pain. He was spinning like a top and sailing away from the hull of the Exkirid. The gravity generators in his glider had automatically compensated for the impulse of the plasma stream, but it would not do the same for external sources of acceleration. It took Hyong far too long to figure out how to stop his spin and properly orient himself again. Even after he'd stopped, his head still felt like it was spinning.
At first, he thought his left arm and wing had simply gone numb, but as he tried to flex the joints an excruciating pain left him breathless. He could feel the left side of his combat harness tightening, constricting the blood flow to that side of his body. The inside of the harness felt sticky.
Hyong looked around to figure out what had happened. He had already traveled back nearly a hundred meters, and was now floating out past the bulk of the aeroshuttle still clamped onto the Exkirid's docking port.
At the front of the aeroshuttle, crouching on top of the cockpit, a Charterling was waving a laser cannon in Hyong's direction.
Hyong had been stupid, he'd let his guard down while still very much in the middle of a fight.
He rolled his tongue and spat blood that was pooling inside his mouth out through his teeth so that it ran down the side of his neck. Then he clamped his good right hand over the nozzle of his plasma projector again.
If the Charterling fired its weapon a second time, Hyong couldn't see. The laser cannon did not produce any visible light, and Hyong never felt a second impact. Hyong's plasma stream struck the Charterling at its feet, running the pincers it was using to grasp the hull of the aeroshuttle. The Charterling dropped its cannon and, without any personal propulsion system, was sent floating helplessly away from the aeroshuttle.
This time, Hyong did not permit himself to relax. He magnified his vision through his monocle and scanned the area. There were more Charterlings crawling across the exterior of the Exkirid. Two of them were already turning to point their weapons at Hyong.
Hyong could feel his consciousness starting to fade around the edges. But somehow this only made him more focused on his task. With his feet, he kicked the glider into high acceleration and a broad arc. As he curved around the Charterlings, he let fly with another long stream of plasma. His fire wasn't nearly so precise this time, but he destroyed the two attempting to shoot him. If he didn't kill them outright, Hyong was sure he had at least injured them seriously enough that death couldn't be far off.
Seeing what had happened to their Comrades, the rest of the Charterlings attempted to point their weapons at Hyong as well. Two of them dropped large devices that Hyong had thought were lasers, but could not have been since the aliens began shooting at him with much smaller projectile weapons instead.
Hyong had too much velocity on them, however. And with his assisted targeting he was able to dispatch them all while the Charterlings were still firing uselessly into the space around him.
The projectiles kept flying after they were all dead, however. Hyong spun around once more to find yet another Charterling, half-concealed within one of the aeroshuttle's external airlocks and firing an automatic gun of some sort.
A distant corner of Hyong's mind told him that he ought to be feeling terrified right now. He didn't, though, he hardly felt anything. Impassively, he squeezed the trigger of his plasma projector once again, and the jet of white flame sped across the empty space to light up his next target.
* * *
Hyong had no memory of what he did next. The medics told him that he'd kept firing for several more minutes until he passed out. That he'd melted a hole straight through the aeroshuttle, vaporizing most of its innards in the process. They also told him that he had let himself drift too close to his target, and that he'd given himself severe radiation burns, to the point that his left eye had been rendered useless and would have to be replaced.
That was in addition to the major reconstruction work he'd have to have on his left arm and wing. The fully powered combat harness had been able to absorb enough of the blast to keep the laser from simply snapping Hyong in half. But it hadn't been enough to prevent his limbs from shattering. The blow had burst every blood vessel in his left wing. If the suit hadn't clamped down so hard, Hyong might have drowned in his own blood before anyone could recover him.
By comparison, Junior Command Operative Kerexyajuzaw had come away with only minor injuries. She'd had some tissue damage on the exposed surfaces of her severed leg, but that was easily repaired with artificial flesh grafts. By the time Hyong woke up, she could already move her own leg again.
Even so, Hyong was still lucky: he'd lived. The two technicians he'd met at the docking hatches had died, as had two warriors and an engineer who'd breathed the gas the Charterlings had been flinging around, some sort of neurotoxin.
There had been thirty Charterlings aboard the shuttle in total. Fortunately, their combat tactics hadn't been nearly so sophisticated as their electronic deception. After the initial shock wore off, the Exkirid's warriors had taken just a few minutes to clear them out of the corridors and destroy what remained of their aeroshuttle after Hyong had finished with it.
Hyong's fight had given him a certain degree of shipboard fame, and he was still unsure what to make of this. Various members of the crew had already visited him in the medical ward, leaving him with a small pile of gold coins and spiced meat as demonstrations of their gratitude. It made Hyong uncomfortable, especially the visits from the Exkirid's remaining warriors. He'd personally killed more Charterlings than most of the Republic's warriors ever would, but that had really just been the result of lucky accidents, not any great skill.
Hyong reached out with his right arm and popped another tiny cube of meat into his mouth to savor. He hated being in the medical bed, it forced him to lie on his back, almost completely horizontal and staring up at the ceiling. The awkward position made it difficult to eat food; he'd vomited up the first meal he'd had since the fight by attempting to consume it too quickly.
At least the wrappings the medics had put around his entire left wing and arm were numbing the nerves of that side of his body. Hyong had been stupid enough to ask to see pictures of what his injury looked like; he was glad he didn't have to feel it. As long as he only looked to the right and never tried to do anything with his left hand, he could almost forget about it.
"So what do you think?" a voice asked from across the room.
"About what?" Hyong looked up.
Kerexyajuzaw was eyeing him over the top of a computer. She at least was able to sit up in a chair, even if her leg wasn't quite ready to allow her to stand just yet.
"About the report the Senior Command Operative just gave."
Hyong yawned, "I'm on medical leave, I don't have to have to analyze that stuff anymore."
"You're not curious?" she sounded appalled.
"I'll read it later," Hyong curled his tongue around the cube of meat and tried to enjoy the flavor.
"He thinks the Charterlings weren't part of their regular military. None of their equipment was the usual standard, we've never seen the big railguns they were carrying anywhere before."
"Was it mostly commercial stuff?"
"A good portion looks like variations on export models, yes."
"Kikidigee-ohk clan, like the aeroshuttle?"
"Umm," Kerexyajuzaw tapped at her computer for a moment, and then looked back at him, "yes."
Hyong made an affirmative gesture, "I thought so. It must have been a clan militia; they were way too easy to fight off."
She snorted, "Is that your modesty again?"
But Hyong dismissed the notion, "No. There's no way I should have been able to manage what I did. If they'd been real military, they would have cut me to pieces. They also would have brought more than thirty warriors on one aeroshuttle."
"And what would a Kikidigee-ohk militia be doing here in the core? We hardly ever even see their trade ships; they're way out on the border with the Beta Kyhyex."
Hyong picked up one of his gold coins and rolled it around his fingers for a few moments as he considered this.
"Okay, how does this sound?" He flicked the gold coin at Kerexyajuzaw. To Hyong's delight, she raised one hand and caught it deftly. "They wanted to capture the Exkirid. The Charterlings are worried about the advantage we're building in FTL speeds, so the Kikidigee-ohk decided they'd capture a new model warp drive and make a fortune off of it."
"I guess it could explain the gas," Kerexyajuzaw was now fiddling thoughtfully with the coin, as Hyong had been.
"They didn't want to damage the ship too much, yes."
"But it can't have been an independent operation. All the attacks on the other core worlds were conducted by regular Fleet ships; do you really think they were coordinating with a hub clan? To the point of transporting an armed militia team here?"
"You know, that raises a good question I'm going to have to ask next time someone's down here. That shuttle got here somehow, where did the ships—"
Hyong's question was answered before he could even finish asking. A wailing alarm sounded in the medical ward and warning lights flashed five times around the ceiling. Then the alarms were replaced by the voice of the Exkirid's second-in-command, who sounded entirely too calm for his message.
"Now hear this. We are at full tactical alert. All crew report to combat stations immediately and prepare for battle. We will enter maximum effective firing range of hostile vessels in eighty seconds."
Hyong tried to roll out of his bed, and growled at himself when the motion was checked by the straps still holding him down on the left. He groped at the table beside him for his computer. Across the room, Kerexyajuzaw was staring at her own in horror, but Hyong wanted to see whatever it was for himself.
The CIC's sensor department had anticipated such curiosity, and had conveniently put up a magnified video image of the enemy ship on its top channel. Hyong gaped.
It looked like a crater had been dug out of Ker Hagg II. What had previously been a simple storm within the gas giant's upper atmosphere had exploded into spiraling clouds jets of gas thousands of kilometers long which arced out from the surface before falling back to form miniature atmospheric storms of their own.
In the middle of the crater was a gray-blue sphere, obviously an artificial construction. Overlaid scale marks showed that the object was more than five kilometers in diameter.
It was a Charterling dreadnought.
* * *
Karee. Six weeks later.
Hyong's left wing itched. It took an enormous mental effort to resist scratching at it. The first day after he'd begun his regenerative treatment, he'd scratched right through his own flesh. The doctors said he was having a mild allergic reaction to the nano-machines which were swarming through the blood vessels of his left wing assisting in repairs. Apparently the complex molecules were not completely compatible with everyone's immune system. The doctors had offered to bind his wing with a large restraint that would prevent him from scratching, but Hyong had declined. He'd rather have the freedom to get up out of bed on his own—even if it meant he had to bear the itching on his own too.
"I think the first thing I'd like to do after getting out of here," Hyong said, attempting to distract himself with conversation, "is find a rainstorm to fly through."
Kerexyajuzaw looked at him from the chair in the corner. Even though she'd now completely recovered from her own injuries, she was still coming regularly to visit Hyong. Hyong was grateful, he appreciated her company.
"Operative," she said, "while I assure you that I will find it hilarious when you lose control, crash into the ground, and break your other wing; I don't think the Navy will be so amused."
"I don't care," Hyong said defiantly, "I've been grounded long enough. I've earned the right to fly again, and rainstorms are fun."
"I prefer just a nice cloud myself. Makes you feel like you're alone in the air, and doesn't screw so much with your flight."
Hyong snorted. "Clouds are cliché. At least actual rainfall is exciting."
"Well I think I've seen quite enough of your sort of excitement, thank you," she rubbed the spot on her leg where it had been severed.
"Now that you mention it," Hyong turned to look at his bare, pinkish-raw wing, "I think I may have too."
They fell into silence, and Hyong became aware of his itching again. A month and a half of hospitalization to repair a smashed wing; it was absurd. Hyong could have been fully recovered within two weeks of his return to Karee if he'd had the wing removed and replaced with a cloned substitute. But the doctors had made the mistake of giving him a choice, rather than just performing the procedure. Hyong had risked his entire life to save the Exkirid from the Charterlings, but he was too squeamish to volunteer to have his own wing cut off.
With other parts, he'd had no choice. His left eye had been damaged beyond repair. The replacement felt no different, and Hyong appreciated having his full sight restored. The doctors had also replaced a failing lung and given him an artificial spleen: the original having ruptured when he took the shot to his side.
The door to the hospital room opened. Kerexyajuzaw turned her head, but couldn't see who it was around the corner. Hyong had a clear view, but it took him a moment to recognize the older female.
Hyong gaped, "Mistress…"
Mistress Iohur Kareyeki closed the door behind her and walked up to the foot of Hyong's bed. "Hello, Hyong," she said.
No one spoke for a moment. Kerexyajuzaw looked between Hyong and Iohur a few times, and then blinked.
"Um," Hyong said, attempting to recover his poise. He held out his right hand, "Mistress, this is Junior Command Operative Kerexyajuzaw, my superior. Command Operative, this is Iohur Kareyeki, my old school mistress."
Iohur pivoted and bowed politely to Kerexyajuzaw. The Command Operative started blankly for a few moments.
She murmured, "Iohurkare…"
Kerexyajuzaw bolted up out of her chair and onto her feet.
"You're a deontologist!" she stared at Hyong.
Hyong winced. He glanced between the two females, feeling cornered. "Yes," he admitted finally.
Kerexyajuzaw looked horrified. She gave Iohur another shocked stare, and then looked at her own hands for just a moment before throwing them into the air.
"I don't believe it," she muttered.
The Junior Command Operative strode quickly across the room and was out the door within a second. The heavy door took a few more seconds to close shut on its own springs behind her.
Hyong sighed, "There are days that I wish I wasn't, though."
Iohur glanced at the closed door, "If she's willing to let the one detail override all her other judgments about you, then she's not worth your time."
Hyong's wings twitched involuntarily, "Whereas you, Mistress, would never dare to judge someone so quickly."
The comment washed over her. "I'm not seeking to mate with you," she said simply.
Hyong sighed again.
"Why are you here, Mistress Kareyeki?"
Iohur sat in the chair that Kerexyajuzaw had vacated. Once she was settled, she said, "I heard about what you did at Ker Hagg, Hyong, you're quite a hero."
"How did you hear about that?" The public had been informed that there was a battle, but most of the details were still classified.
She waved a hand casually, "Oh the Republic's going to be publicizing your actions and giving you some awards for valor and skill. You're also getting promoted a grade or two."
"Captain Oreehayiyux deserves it more," Hyong said with a modesty that was mostly genuine. "I just killed a handful of Charterlings; he had to hold the ship together against a dreadnought while I was incapacitated."
"He's being rewarded too, the whole crew is. But it seems Oreehayiyux praised you quite highly during his debriefing. President Adohyekeer intends to congratulate you in person."
Hyong made a dissatisfied grunt, "Well I can't say I'm looking forward to that ceremony."
"Isn't that a shame? Especially because I passed his advance team on the way in."
"What?" Hyong ignored the pain in his left wing to sit upright and stare in horror at the door to his room.
The door, however, did not burst open to admit the President of the Republic or any other uninvited notables. Hyong sank back down again and scowled at Iohur.
She smiled pleasantly, "Yes, I expect he'll be here any min—"
The door swung open and a short male with khaki-colored fur and a gold beret strode purposefully into the room. He was follo